


something beautiful

by Perks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 21:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perks/pseuds/Perks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-TWS. Bucky regains most of his memories, but there’s one thing he can’t quite put his finger on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something beautiful

Steve is hand-drying dishes in the kitchen and Bucky is flicking through TV channels on the couch one Saturday afternoon, a sort of content silence between them, when it happens. “Steve?” Bucky asks, turning to face the kitchen, his brow furrowed.

“Yeah, Buck?” Steve responds, stacking another clean, dry dish in the cupboard.

“Can I ask you something?” Bucky says. “It’s about a memory.”

This is how, over time, about half of their conversations have gone; Bucky struggling to remember something and Steve being there to coax and guide him through it.

“Of course,” Steve replies softly, setting down the dishtowel and coming to sit beside his friend on the couch. “What’s up?”

Bucky frowns for a moment, eyes downcast, as he fiddles with his hands (metal fingers entwined with flesh ones) and tries to figure out what to say. Finally, he looks up at Steve, the Winter Soldier’s brown eyes boring into the Captain’s blue ones. “Did…” he stops, then takes a deep breath and continues. “Did I love you? When I was James Barnes?”

Steve’s eyes go wide at the question. “Buck, I… I don’t know. You never said anything to me about it, and I would have remembered. Why—”

“Did you love me?” Bucky cuts him off, his tone desperate. Steve glances at the other man’s hands, which are clenched into fists, his flesh hand turning white with the force of his strength.

Steve clears his throat, but when he speaks, his voice still cracks. “I— yeah, Buck. I don’t know if you knew, but I did. I always did.” He smiles weakly at his friend, not sure what to think of all this, or why Bucky is suddenly wanting so badly to know; but he’s finally told James Buchanan Barnes how he feels, how he has felt for all these years— no matter if his friend was Bucky, the soldier from Brooklyn who was always protecting him, or the Winter Soldier, the brainwashed assassin who was assigned to kill him. Steve has always loved Bucky, and he suspects he always will. It’s muscle memory for him, after all, invariable; Bucky Barnes is a part of Steve Rogers (the best part of him, Steve thinks, always was), and nothing either of them could do will ever change that.

Bucky is silent for a moment. Then he replies, “What does love feel like?”

Steve’s face grows warm and he swallows. This isn’t new, he has to tell himself; at the beginning, when Bucky was first healing, he’d often ask Steve or Sam or Natasha how a particular emotion felt. It was one of the cruelest things Hydra had done to him, in Steve’s opinion; not only had they taken his memories, but they’d managed to take his sense of feeling away as well. “It feels like... that one person is all that matters. Like they’re all you’ll ever need to be happy, and all you want is their happiness, even if it isn’t with you.”

“How- how do you know if you’re in love?” Bucky asks, his voice so soft Steve can barely hear him, even with his superhuman senses.

“Well,” Steve begins, “it’s different for everyone, but usually, you can’t stop thinking about them. You’d do anything for them, even put your life on the line. You constantly want to be around them, you worry about them, and you feel like there’s no one else in the world who is as perfect for you as they are.” He pauses. There is a lump in his throat, and he realizes it is because the person he, Steve Rogers, is in love with is the one sitting right next to him. So he voices his thoughts. “Bucky, you asked me if I loved you. I told you that I always did, but I’m realizing now… that I still do.” He looks up at his best friend, whose face is unreadable. The room fills with the heavy sound of silence, and Steve can’t bear it; he knows it was too soon, that he shouldn’t have said anything, that now Bucky will withdraw again into the silent shell of a man he used to be. He clears his throat and is about to stand up and make an excuse to leave the room when Bucky speaks again. “So,” he says quietly, “what would you do if I said I think I love you back?”

Steve’s mouth is suddenly dry, his heart is beating ridiculously fast, and his stomach feels like his pre-serum scrawny self just jumped out of a moving plane. He swallows. “I… are you sure, Buck?”

Bucky snorts, and the young, unbroken Brooklyn soldier is visible in him again. “Do you think I’d be saying these things if I wasn’t? Asshole.” But his big grin betrays the fact that he’s joking, and Steve almost can’t contain his happiness.

“Can I kiss you, then?” Steve asks, holding his breath.

Bucky just rolls his eyes. “I’ve waited 73 years for you to ask me that.”

**Author's Note:**

> come chat with me (about stevebucky, the winter soldier feels, whatever you'd like) at cabeswatehr.tumblr.com!


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